Catmint (Nepeta)

How to choose a catmint

Catmint Walker's Low is the most widely planted form. Despite the name it is not the shortest, making a billowing mound around 60 centimetres high and up to a metre wide, with lavender blue spikes over a long season. Catmint Walker's Blue is another blue flowered selection of the same hybrid.

The Dropmore Catmint is an old selection with an upright habit, and the White Catmint, Snowflake, has white flowers and a lower, compact habit that suits edging and smaller beds. Blue and white planted together along a path is a simple and effective combination.

Where catmint works

Catmint suits cool temperate, warm temperate and Mediterranean climates, and dry inland districts where it gets some water in summer. It is frost hardy, dying back partly or fully in a cold winter and shooting again from the base in spring. Full sun and good drainage are the two requirements. In the humid subtropics it can be grown in a raised bed in an open position, but it is shorter lived there, and it is not a plant for the tropics.

Use it to edge paths, to soften the base of roses, as a groundcover on a sunny bank and in gravel gardens. Bees work the flowers constantly. Cats are drawn to catmint and may roll in it or chew it, so a young plant in a cat's territory may need a wire cloche until it is established.

It combines well with lavender and salvia, which enjoy the same sun and drainage, and it earns a place among the bee and butterfly friendly plants.

Planting and spacing

Plant in spring or autumn into soil that drains freely. Catmint does not need rich ground, and heavy feeding makes it soft and floppy. On clay, raise the bed and add coarse sand or gravel. Space the larger forms 60 to 75 centimetres apart and the compact white form about 40 centimetres apart. For a continuous edging along a path, plant at the closer end of those ranges and set the row back far enough that the mounds can spill without blocking the way.

Care basics

Water through the first summer, then only in dry spells. Established catmint is drought hardy and resents wet feet, particularly in winter.

The key job is shearing. When the first flush of flowers fades, usually in early summer, cut the whole plant back by half with hedge shears. It looks bare for a fortnight, then regrows as a tight mound and flowers again into autumn. Without that cut the plant flops open from the centre. In late winter, cut the old stems to the new shoots at the base. Divide congested clumps every three or four years in autumn or early spring, and replant the outer pieces. Catmint has few pests, and a light sprinkle of slow release fertiliser in spring is all the feeding it needs.

Common questions

Is catmint the same as catnip?

No. Catnip is Nepeta cataria, a taller, coarser herb. Garden catmints are different plants grown for flowers, though cats enjoy both.

When does catmint flower?

From mid spring to autumn, with the heaviest flush in late spring and a repeat after the plant is sheared.

Does catmint die back in winter?

In cold districts it dies back and returns in spring. In mild areas it stays partly evergreen.

Does catmint spread?

The clumps widen slowly but it does not run, and the common blue hybrids set little or no seed.